Details about the Department of Energy’s fiscal 2019 budget proposal for Cold War nuclear cleanup and civilian nuclear waste programs still were not available at deadline Monday for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, only days before Energy Secretary Rick Perry is due on Capitol Hill to explain his agency’s latest spending plans.
The week the White House released a summary of its 2019 DOE budget request, the agency said it would take another two weeks to issue the detailed budget justifications Congress depends on to write the department’s annual spending bill. The final details of the agency’s request would have been public Feb. 27, by that timetable. But as of late Monday afternoon, justifications had been released only for DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration and its Office of Science.
This is par for the course for parts of DOE. The Office of Environmental Management, steward of Cold War nuclear cleanup programs that cost around $6.5 billion a year, has routinely taken weeks longer than the rest of the agency to drop its detailed budget document.
In its 2019 budget summary, DOE requested a small increase for the Environmental Management office, to about $6.6 billion starting Oct. 1. Within that, the administration proposed $150 million for the office to take over and start cleaning up facilities no longer needed for the active nuclear-weapon programs managed by the semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration.
The White House is also seeking $120 million for DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy to continue the Donald Trump administration’s effort to license Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev., as a permanent nuclear-waste repository.
The Energy Department did not immediately reply to a request for comment Monday.
Perry is slated Thursday to take questions about DOE’s 2019 budget request from members of the House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee.
